Rob Neufeld on Michael Parker's new novel

9:23 PM,
Mar. 22, 2014

Written by

Rob Neufeld
Columnist

An Airstream can symbolize one's life, as it does with Maria, a west Texas girl self-exiled to Oregon, at the start of Michael Parker's new novel, "All I Have in This World." For her, the camper memorializes dead romance at home.

Or the Venus flytrap could be a symbol. Marcus Banks, the other main character in the book, pins his entrepreneurial and educational dreams to the native plant in backwater Slit, N.C. (a fictional place outside of Wilmington).

Most conspicuously, for Parker in his latest endeavor, the symbol is a 1984 Buick Electra. It becomes the joint possession of Maria and Marcus ...